Jim Wallace to publish memoirs

Jim Wallace's call for the Holyrood First Minister and his or her deputy to have a seat in a reformed House of Lords has gained some publicity. That call was made at a lecture at Glasgow University this evening.

On Sunday the Herald reported that he is to go further next year and publish his memoirs. The paper said:

He has hinted there could be revelations that will cause embarrassment to some. The book will give his account of the frosty relations he had with Paddy Ashdown, who sought to do a Labour-LibDem deal with Tony Blair and to direct the Scottish coalition arrangements from London.

Mystery at Bonkers Hall

I have remarked before that many literary scholars regard Nevill Holt in Leicestershire as the model for Bonkers Hall, the ancestral home of my old friend Lord Bonkers.

With this in mind, it is interesting to read a Times feature on David Ross, co-founder of the Carphone Warehouse, who bought the old pile when it closed as a prep school and converted it back into a private house.

Its author, Caroline Donald, describes the character of the place:

The 30,000sq ft house sits on top of a gentle hill ... with huge views over the Welland Valley. It is a gloriously eccentric architectural assortment, with castellations, turrets, cloisters and wings added to the original 13th-century great hall over the years. It was home to the Cunard family from 1876 to 1912; Nancy Cunard, the writer and society hostess, was born there in 1896.

And:

Elaborate wrought-iron gates lead back to the lower lawn. Along with the weather vane on the house, they were made by Sir Bache Cunard, Nancy’s father, in his workshop in the tower.

Googling "Nevill Holt" also throws up this painting - "Mystery at Nevill Holt" by Duncan Hannah. No doubt it stems from the Hall's time as a school, but Lord Bonkers would probably conclude that one of the Well-Behaved Orphans has got over the wall.

BelindaOatenWatch

FreeThink points us towards an article in the Daily Mail.

Henry Porter in the Observer

Porter now occupies the role that Nick Cohen used to have in the Observer. He is the columnist who makes you cheer by exposing this government's assault on liberty.

Today's piece is especially good:

What runs through all this seems to be a rather surprising dislike of the British people. It was once possible to believe the government's unusual attention to law, order and behaviour was benevolent yet ill-conceived. Now it looks more like the result of late-onset sociopathy, influenced by a long period in power and the degenerate entanglement between Downing Street and the seething red-top newspapers.

We'll always have Powys

The Shropshire Star reports:

TV weathergirl Sian Lloyd today scoffed newspaper reports that her two-year engagement to Mid Wales MP Lembit Opik had ended.

Rumours began to fly after the Welsh-born weather presenter appeared on TV last week without her engagement ring.

But Sian today denied there was any possibility that the couple were splitting.

“It’s absolute nonsense,” she said today.

I'm sorry to include such a trivial story, but I have been itching for the chance to use this headline. I also note that the Star does not bother to put the little dots over Lembit's O.

Later. I assume they mean "scoffed at newspaper reports".

House Points: Safeguarding vulnerable groups?

Today's House Points from Liberal Democrat News. It owes an indecent amount to the Manifesto Club report The Case Against Vetting: How the Child Protection Industry is Damaging Social Relations.

Checking out

On Monday MPs from all parties gave final approval to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill. Who could object to legislation designed to ensure people who work with children do not endanger them?

Well, let’s have a try.

First, look at the scale of the new law. A report from the libertarian Manifesto Club suggests that 9.5 million adults - a third of the working population - will be subject to regular criminal checks. Already a bewildering variety of groups have to undergo them: university lecturers who teach 17-year-olds, hospital secretaries, cricket umpires, teenagers whose parents mind a younger child.

On Monday, despite two years of consultation, the government still found more groups to include at the last minute.

Second, this explosion of vetting will discourage volunteering. To give a couple of hours helping at a school disco you will have to produce three forms of identification, pay £30 and wait for a month.

And it’s not just the expense and inconvenience: the involvement of the criminal records system reinforces the prejudice that there must be something odd about an adult who enjoys the company of children. Already the Scouting and Guiding Movement is struggling to find volunteers. To discourage them further at a time when everyone agrees youngsters need more exercise and more socialisation is crazy.

Third, it is not clear the new law will save children from abuse. It casts the net so widely that people will be too busy checking forms and covering their own backs to look at how a particular adult is behaving with children. And it is unlikely that notorious murderers like Ian Huntley or Thomas Hamilton would have been picked up.

Fourth, vetting will take a fortune out of the voluntary sector. Many volunteers have to pay to be checked themselves, which costs up to £30. Employers pay more than that. The Scout Association carries out 50,000 checks a year, at a total cost of £250,000. Still, it is all good news for Capita, whose deal with the Criminal Records Bureau will net it £400 million.

Fifth - and most important - there is Calder’s First Law of Politics: If men and women of good will from all parties unite to support a measure, it is bound to turn our disastrously.

Little blue men

In May 1997 a flying saucer was seen over Michael Howard's house in Kent.

I think that explains a lot.

Dave Hill on the BBC

Quite:

The BBC makes heroes out of big babies like Jeremy Clarkson, bigheads like Jonathan Ross and big bullies like Chris Moyles - Grown Men Behaving Badly at our expense.

Nick Robinson Ate My Hamster

Lovers of political cartoons may enjoy this blog.

Lord Bonkers adds: The owner's portrait of me is regarded by many art historians as being his finest work.

Irony in Arundel

The BBC reports:

A West Sussex fire station which did not have a fire alarm fitted has been badly damaged in a blaze.

I've got a nice cuttlefish for you

Factchecking Pollyanna - the blog which keeps an eye on Polly Toynbee's Guardian columns - has woken up.

Its most recent posting looks at Toynbee's column on NICE and NHS funding for drugs. Tim Worstall is also worth reading on the subject.

Why aren't you in school, Mr Tompkins?

Red faces in Colchester last week:

A policing crackdown on truants hit a snag yesterday when it emerged many pupils were out of the classroom because of teacher-training days.

The "truancy sweep" across Colchester was a joint initiative between Essex Police and educational welfare officers from the county council.

All very amusing. But later on the East Anglian Daily Times report says:

Pc John Meacock and educational welfare officer Justine Musk headed to Tesco at Highwoods, where they spotted a number of youngsters with parents or grandparents.

But after a friendly word from Pc Meacock, it emerged they were all out with good reason - either teacher training or in one case a kidney infection.

The idea that you can be stopped by the police and asked to account for yourself simply because you are with your children has always seemed to me outrageous. It is something that would take place in totalitarian state. But we have become so used to the belief that the state cares more for our children than we do ourselves that it goes unremarked.

Found via Fair Deal Phil (cringe).

Anna Russell and Don Thompson

Two great eccentrics had their obituaries in the Guardian today.

Anna Russell, who has died at the age of 94, was a musician and satirist, famous for her lampoons of Wagner:

Once Siegfried has met Gutrune in Götterdämmerung, Russell reminded her listeners, "She's the only woman that Siegfried's ever come across who isn't his aunt."

When challenged by Wagnerites who felt she was ridiculing sacred art, she replied: "I merely tell the story as accurately as possible and play the bits of music exactly as written. I can't help it if the story is absurd."

I caught part of a radio programme about this remarkable woman a few months ago. You can find it here.

Don Thompson won a gold medal in the 50km walk at the Rome Olympics in 1960. As his obituary says:

Thompson's preparations for the steamy heat of Rome have gone down in sporting legend. Determined to be properly prepared, he trained for the race by exercising in temperatures of up to 38C (100F) in the bathroom of his home in Kent, which he had converted into a steam room using heaters and kettles of boiled water. "There was an electric heater attached to the wall and I thought, 'Well, that won't provide enough heat,'" Thompson said in an interview two years ago. "I had to boost the humidity too, so I got a Valor stove and put that in the bath. Half an hour was more than enough; I was feeling dizzy by then. It wasn't until several years later that I realised I wasn't feeling dizzy because of the heat; it was carbon monoxide from the stove."

Who needs Lottery funding when you have that spirit?

Bridgnorth Cliff Railway

Talking of Bridgnorth, this is rather wonderful.

Community action in Shropshire

The Star reports:

Residents faced with paying thousands of pounds to repair Bridgnorth council sewage works are considering taking over the plants themselves.

New blow to Cameron

David Cameron has received a further setback in his attempt to make the Conservative Party more representative of modern Britain.

At the start of the month I pointed to Newsnight research suggesting that so far 83 per cent of the Tory candidates selected to fight the next general election have been called "Rees-Mogg".

It has just got worse. Hot Ginger and Dynamite reports that Annunziata Rees-Mogg has been selected as Tory candidate for Somerton and Frome.

Me and Wogan vs Jonathan Ross

We know what's going on, me and Wogan.

Here is Terry quoted in today's Sunday Telegraph:

"As for those much-trumpeted seven-figure deals, I have the suspicion that the corporation is in some cases over-paying. Their excuse is that if they do not offer millions, the opposition will lure the talent away with honeyed words and equally large sums. Frankly the BBC is often giving huge quantities of money to people who would prefer to work for the corporation anyway. We can all name stars who have been persuaded to cross over from BBC to ITV, and it has ended in tears."

And this is what I wrote in Liberal Democrat News back in July:

But it is hard even to begin making the case for paying him £6 million a year when most BBC staff are suffering a pay squeeze. Their managers defend huge salaries for performers (and themselves) by appealing to the market. If we don’t pay them this sort of money, someone else will.

The answer to that is simple. Let them go. The backwaters of British broadcasting are teeming with people who thought that life would be better away from the BBC. Just ask Des Lynam. “I’ll have another consonant please, Carol.”

Or as Oliver Goldsmith put it:

Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade:
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.

Granted, with me you get a quotation from The Deserted Village thrown in. But basically me and Wogan are both men of the world and on the same wavelength.

Chocolate money for the Lib Dems

Good news from ePolitix:

The Liberal Democrats are to receive a £2m donation from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

The gift will be a major boost to the party, which according to its last accounts filed with the Electoral Commission had just under £300,000 at the end of 2005.

The trust, a charity which funds research into tackling 'social difficulties', has previously given money to Labour and the Greens, and has consistently supported the Lib Dems.

In 2003 it gave the party more than £500,000 to fight the local, Scottish and Welsh elections, and in 2004 and 2005 it donated £250,000.

John Humphrys remembers Aberfan

The Aberfan disaster took place 40 years ago today:

I have always said and I will always say that nothing - nothing - I will ever see will compare to the horrors of that day.

From Pansea Bay to Phuket

Mark and Belinda Oaten have been to Thailand. I hope they had nice weather for it.

They have also been on Woman's Hour.